He went. She worked the outer western edge alone for the first forty minutes and did not let herself look at the sky more than once every 10 minutes. Because looking at it told her things she could not yet act on and she needed to spend every available unit of attention on the dirt in front of her. She cut the driest vegetation beyond the fence line. First dead grass, dried forb, anything that could carry a spark from the coming fire into the planted section.
She worked methodically, the same way she worked everything. Not rushing to point of carelessness, but not resting either. The pile of cut material she dragged away from the fence grew quickly. It was remarkable how much dry fuel it had accumulated along her property edge without her having specifically noticed it, because in a normal fire year, it was just the natural margin of a working farm. In this year, it was kindling.
Silas was back in 30 minutes with Hiram Bell, Tom Hendricks' eldest son, and two other men she recognized by sight from the settlement. Behind them came a wagon with two barrels and Dorothea Hendricks, sitting beside her son on the bench with the expression of a woman who had decided what needed to be done and was doing it. Hiram Bell jumped down from his horse and picked up a shovel without being asked and without looking at her for direction, which was the most useful thing he had done in 6 months. She would think about that later. She directed the widening.
The existing cleared lane along the western fence was not deep enough; a fire this size would throw sparks across six feet of bare dirt easily. She needed to widen it, and she needed the interior edge of the break to be as moisture-rich as possible. "We pull the outer two squash rows," she said to the group, "not cut, pull, root balls and all. We want the disrupted soil and whatever moisture the roots were holding. The shale covers come off those outer vessels and we use the water in the pots to wet down the break line as we go."
Hiram looked at her. "You're emptying the pots, the outer rows?" "Yes." He understood what that meant. She was dismantling part of the system she had spent the season building in order to defend the rest of it.
He said nothing else and went to work. They tore out the squash together. It was brutal work because the plants were healthy and their root systems had developed exactly as she'd designed, deep-reaching, anchored against the surrounding soil. Pulling a Hubbard squash vine that has been growing for 3 months in well-maintained root conditions is not like pulling a wilted plant. You put your back into it and the vine resists and the root ball comes up with a substantial amount of dark soil that has been touched by moisture all summer.
That soil turned face up in the widening break was cooler and darker than anything on the surface had any business being in August. She watched Silas and Hiram work side by side on the outer row and noted that they had developed without discussion an efficient paired technique. Hiram loosening the root ball with the pickaxe while Silas pulled. Neither man commented on the coordination.